Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Homemade Soft Pretzels

I recently made homemade soft pretzels. I found the recipe at the King Arthur Flour website, but I’ll post it here as well. The website has directions on a food processor method as well as a bread machine method but all I had were my two hands and a fork, so here’s the manual method:

Place all of the dough ingredients into a bowl, and beat till well-combined. Knead the dough, by hand or machine, for about 5 minutes, till it's soft, smooth, and quite slack. Flour the dough and place it in a bag, and allow it to rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 500°F. Prepare two baking sheets by spraying them with vegetable oil spray, or lining them with parchment paper. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface, and divide it into eight equal pieces. Allow the pieces to rest, uncovered, for 5 minutes. While the dough is resting, combine the 1/2 cup warm water and the baking soda, and place it in a shallow bowl. Make sure the baking soda is thoroughly dissolved.

Roll each piece of dough into a long, thin rope, and twist each rope into a pretzel. Dip each pretzel in the baking soda wash (this will give the pretzels a nice, golden-brown color), and place them on the baking sheets. Sprinkle them lightly with coarse, kosher, or pretzel salt. Allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes.

Bake the pretzels for 8 to 9 minutes, or until they're golden brown.

Remove the pretzels from the oven, and brush them thoroughly with the melted butter. Keep brushing the butter on until you've used it all up; it may seem like a lot, but that's what gives these pretzels their ethereal taste. Eat the pretzels warm, or reheat them in an oven or microwave.

I doubled the recipe and used a stick of melted butter to brush on all 16 of them. These were amazing and they got rave reviews. They really weren’t too hard to make, but they will take a few hours with all the rising time needed. Jamie keeps asking me when I will make them again.

I made them while on vacation and we ate them within an hour of coming out of the oven. They were so good while warm! Not sure how they would be cold, I think you would need to pop them in the microwave for a few sec.

About Me

I am a wife, mother, daughter and sister. I am also a good friend to some really great people. I love to read, bake, watch movies, go camping and attend Brewer games. I am a Milwaukee girl living in a town not too far away.